Harding zeros in on school reading skills

The district's Language Arts Committee has been busy drafting
the curriculum for the last several months with the help of Judith
Thornton, a reading consult ant from the Professional Development
Institute based in Seattle, Wash. Thornton has been going over
reading activities, instructional objectives, and demonstration
lessons with the district's grades K-2 teachers in her nearly 13
visits to Harding Township School.

"Children must have a a good skills set and be exposed to lots
of great literature," Thornton said. "This is a systematic
organized curriculum assessed at every point along the
way."

Patty Alexander, chairperson of the Language Arts Department for
the elementary school, said the new curriculum states specific
goals for each grade level. Phonology, spelling, and simple reading
comprehension will be introduced at the kindergarten
level.

First graders will continue with phonics and reading
comprehension and by second grade, students will be exposed to more
literature for more advanced reading comprehension, she
said.

Vital Assessments

A key part of the new curriculum will be increased emphasis on
student assessments allowing teachers to gauge the progress of
their students and provide more detailed feedback to parents, said
Gary Suda, a member of the district's Language Arts
Committee.

Students will be given diagnostic tests at the beginning of each
year to determine their level of ability and the assessments will
be tied to the New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards, he said.
Assessments would also be given throughout the year to determine if
skills have been mastered by students.

Suda said students will receive a language arts portfolio
containing the student's assessments and written work. The
portfolios will communicate assessment levels from teacher to
teacher and promote accountability, he said.

Based on a student's ability level, said Suda, teachers will be
able to break a class into small flexible skill groups of six to
eight students.

Thornton said teachers would have the flexibility to regroup
students in a class room based on skill level. She said she
preferred early intervention by teachers rather than immediately
sending a child to a reading specialist.

Small Groups

Schools Superintendent Dennis Pallozzi said he supported small
group instruction and a more individualized approach to
reading.

"This allows kids to move ahead if necessary," Pallozzi said.
"We don't want to hold kids back. We want them to work at their own
level. Teachers are trying this now without all the structure we're
trying to apply to it."

"There is a lot of good instruction," said Pallozzi, "but we
didn't have a curriculum plan with consistency within a grade or
among the three grades."

Thornton said young students need to spend plenty of time
reading outside the classroom. She recommended that children read
at least 20 minutes a night and that at least 60 percent of their
reading consist of non-fiction books.

"Teachers do the teaching but parents need to help with
reinforcement and practice," said Thornton.

Thornton said parents should practice "TWI" with their children:
reading "TO" their children so they can hear good modeling; reading
together "WITH" their children with each taking turns so children
develop fluency and can decode automatically; and finally letting
their children read "INDEPENDENTLY."

If children are reading on their own, she said, they should not
miss more than one out of 20 words. If they do, it means the
reading material is too difficult.

The goal of young readers, said Thornton, should be fluency in
which children can decode words automatically. Children need to be
able to look at a word and say it right away rather than sounding
out each word, she said.

Lisbeth DiCotiis, the language arts chairperson for the middle
school, said the grades K-2 teachers had had intensive training in
using the new curriculum and will have an ample amount of teacher's
resources including leveled readers for comprehension skills and
decodable texts to work on phonetic sounds.

Pallazzi said there is a need for more non-fiction books for
students and that next month the district would develop a
recommended reading list.

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